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Tencent is aiming to do a Spotify with its entertainment and music business

The China based internet company Tencent, listed on the HKSE, is planning to spin off its music and entertainment subsidiary and list it separately on an exchange in the US.

The chairman of Tencent, Ma Huateng, also known as Pony Ma, made the announcement on Sunday 8 July, one day before Xiaomi’s trading started on the HKSE. Despite the initial price was set at the bottom end of the estimated range, Xiaomi’s share price still closed the day 1.2 percent lower than its opening price, having recovered from a heavy loss of close to 6 percent earlier in the day.

In an interesting twist, Xiaomi’s CEO Lei Jun felt the share price was depressed by the on-going trade disputes between the US and China, when he spoke to the CNN. Meanwhile, the company’s President and Co-Founder Lin Bin told CNBC that the trade war is not a major concern “as Xiaomi had not done much business in the U.S.”

Although Xiaomi is a profitable business, its thin margin (capped at 5 percent by its owner on its hardware business, which accounted for roughly 90 percent of the whole business) made investors deem the price too high.

In comparison, the global leader in streaming music, Spotify, launched its IPO in April this year on NYSE. The price rose by 13 percent on its opening day, rising to $149.01 from the initial offering of $132, despite Spotify being a loss-making company. It was traded at $175.70 when the market closed on Friday 6 July.

We can only wait for Tencent to disclose the profit and loss of its Music and Entertainment group in the run-up to the IPO, but the group, which gets all its business from China, has reported healthy growths. Its paid subscriptions, mainly for video and music, grew by 24 percent to 147 million during the first quarter of 2018, and its total video revenues grew by 85 percent year on year.

The limited appetite on the Hong Kong market, especially when the channel to China-based investors, the instrument called CDR, is hard to come by, in contrast to the enthusiasm to invest in the future on the US market, may have helped tilt the decision by the Tencent board to go for the US stock market.

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